Dear Knoxville

The Crazy Lady that you saw standing alongside Kingston Pike in various locations yesterday photographing tulips and grinning like a fool? That was me. Yep. And the patient fellow sitting in the car in the nearby parking lot(s) (and there were SEVERAL stops) trying hard to not let me see him rolling his eyes? That was my husband. Yep.

Nice, huh?

A Perfect Day

Really. There's nothing much else to say about that. I just hope you all had as wonderful weather as we did here today.

(P.S. And I'm painting tulips and cupcakes again today. Isn't that just the best combo ever? Life s good.)

Cupcakery

A "gorgeous pink cupcake" from The Cupcakery. It actually had a dollop of raspberry filling on the top with a white chocolate mint, but I wanted a cherry on top, so I exercised my artistic license on this one. The best part -- Doug shared a bite of it with me today, and it has a big dollop of the same filling IN THE CENTER of the cake. Double yum. Gorgeous outside and inside ... just like the person* I drew it for!

(*My daughter, the Duchess Cupcake, wanted a picture of one to use as her avatar on Twitter, so this is probably the first of several cupcake drawings. And of course I had to start out with pink...)

The Trouble with Tulips

... the trouble with tulips is that they open so quickly! I started a little sketch of these couple of blooms on the far right side of the first tulip bouquet of the season, and then walked away for a quick bite and to give the paint a chance to dry. When I got back, every flower was open wide and standing up straight and I couldn't even figure out which blooms I'd been working from!

TODAY'S LESSON: Photograph your subject if you're going to take a meal break.

Phooey. I'll have to play with finishing the rest by memory.

Vase de Deux

A pair of daffs sitting in a little bud vase -- now sitting forever in my sketchbook.
Just goes to remind me that I really can find fifteen minutes to sketch a little something fun. I need to remember that!
:-)

A Glimmer of Light

Out in the back yard, cloudy and cold, I spot a glimmer of white and realize that the daffs are pushing up already. There hasn't been anything happening out in the yard for some time, but now spring is here, and we know that there will be more and more things happening until the yard is back into full swing again.

Nice metaphor, huh?

Sorry I've been absent. I've been literally twice as busy as normal with work for the past eight or nine months, and it just got busier at the beginning of the year. By the first week of February I'd wrapped up a lot of stuff, and life is now getting back to what used to be the norm. Quite frankly, for the last two or three weeks I've spent my evenings resting and getting my non-work life caught back up! But now the balance is coming back and it's all good. Thanks for all the inquiries about where the heck I'd disappeared to, and, believe it or not, I'll probably see you again sometime this week.
;-)

(P.S. And busy was FUN -- I've had a GREAT time! If you read this, Cindy, Nikki, Michael, Shannon -- extra thanks to you guys for picking up the slack ... Dennis, Kari, Renee, Allison, Steven, Rachel, Sole, Julie, Stephanie, Leslie, Anita, Christy, Maggie, Andrea, Amber, and Bill ... you all rock! I'm very happy to be part of such a great team!)